The Chefs Cashier - The Bear

8

Mature themes ahead.

Maia stares blankly at the mental hospital notice that they were upping the prices for her mom's room.

"Fuck." She mumbles as her blank stare turning into anger. She crumbles the paper and throws it at her shitty wall. She's satisfied by the sound of it hitting and falling to her chair.

The expression on her face then seeps into sadness as she slumps into her longer couch and starts to weep. A few weeks went by, and she just listened to her mother slowly go more and more insane.

As her conversations with her mother became harder to listen to, the more sunken she felt. She distanced herself a little from the restaurant, but still tried to be there for them.

She had bigger projects now to focus on since the mental hospital was upping the prices. She worked less hours with Carmys permission. She gave the excuse that her full time job was more demanding, but truth was she just felt less motivated.

She stopped planning for her big blog, and focused more on the easy small restaurants in the area she could try.

Sydney, Marcus, Tina and the rest of the staff noticed her absence, and worried for her. But Carmy was the only one she would truly listen to, but he was too busy focusing on opening.

Nobody blamed him for making the restaurant a priority over Maia. The pair mutually pushed their feelings to the side.

12 weeks before opening.

Sydney looked straight at Maia and sighed. They were facing across from each other, Sydney wanted to talk to Maia about her future at the restaurant.

"Are you good Mai?"

Maia looks away but nods her head. Trying to stay in the present, but keeps thinking about her mom, and how she's going to afford another rise in housing.

"I'm, I'm good. Yeah."

"Are you sure? Because you've missed like three days in a row... we're all starting to get worried about you. I'm getting worried about you as a friend Mai. And if this was a normal job I'd have to let you go, but frankly we need the people. I just need to know if we can rely on you Maia."

Maia half paid attention to Sydney half dazed on her situation.

Maia could feel Sydney's eyes on her and she snaps back to look her in the eyes.

"I'm fine, I'm reliable. You can count on me."

"Good, because I'd hate to see you go. I'm sure Carmy would too."

"Hmm, Carmy?"

Sydney looks at her wearily, but stands up wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maia follows after her, and they both walk over to his office.

When they get there, they watched as Carmy cut a lock that was placed in the locker. It must have been Mikes locker... Maia thinks.

She watches as Carmy stares at the baseball cap that was inside it. Without thinking it was like Maia had flipped a switch inside of her. She could feel herself choosing to cling onto Carmy rather than push him away. This was something she always did whenever she distanced herself from a guy she liked because of her own issues.

She can go from 0-100 on feelings real quick.

Maia puts her hand on Carmys shoulder, he takes one look at her and they both share a sympathetic smile before he hands the cap to Richie.

Richie takes it without question, and Maia follows Carmy. The thoughts that surrounded her was how selfish she was for allowing Carmy to be hurting. She wanted to be there for him, she had been a bad friend.